Men's rowing will take on nation's top crews at Head Of The Charles this weekend

Oct. 20, 2004
MARIETTA, Ohio - The Marietta College men’s rowing team travels to Boston, MA this weekend (Oct. 23-24) to compete at the 40th annual Head Of The Charles Regatta.

The Pioneer Navy will compete in the Championship Eight race to be held on Sunday (Oct. 24) at 3:09 p.m.

“We are very excited to compete in this year’s Head Of The Charles,” said head coach John Bancheri. “The fact that a small college can compete at the level of the larger universities speaks volumes for our athletes. Our guys could have entered in the Collegiate event, yet they opted top compete with the big boys in the Championship Eight.”

Marietta will start 18th in the race for The Boston Globe Trophy, which has a field of 37, including the 2003 champions Princeton Training Center.

The members of this week’s Varsity Eight sit from bow - sophomore Christopher Schwartz (Quakertown,PA/ LaSalle), junior Matt Henwood (Malvern, PA/LaSalle), sophomore Kyle Fitzgerald (Brigantine, NJ/Holy Spirit), senior Seth Avery (Vienna, WV/Parkersburg), sophomore Michael Ross (Fairport, NY), senior Mark Dolson (Barrie, Ontario/St. Joseph’s), senior Rob Johnson (Margate, NJ/Atlantic City), senior stroke Chuck Gowdy (Atlantic City, NJ) and sophomore coxswain Joseph Lincke (Woodlyn, PA/Monsignor Bonner).

Marietta Varsity Eight is looking forward to Sunday’s race against the fastest crews in the nation.

"If you want to go fast you have to race the best and be competitive, not just talk about performing," stated Johnson.

"It's a great challenge for us and puts us into a race with the elite clubs and universities in rowing,” noted Gowdy. “Regardless of the outcome we are going to give it our all.”

The Head Of The Charles Regatta, the world's largest two-day rowing event, was first held on October 16, 1965. The race was established by the Cambridge Boat Club members D'Arcy MacMahon, Howard McIntyre, and Jack Vincent, with the audience of Harvard University sculling instructor Ernest Arlett. Arlett proposed that a "head of the river" race similar in tradition to races held in his native England, be held on the Charles River. "Head" races, a class of regattas, are generally three miles long-boats race against each other and the clock, starting sequentially approximately fifteen seconds apart. Winners of each race receive the honorary title of "Head of the River" or, in this case, "Head Of The Charles."

Over the past 40 years, the Head Of The Charles regatta has grown tremendously. Today, more than 7,000 athletes from around the world compete in 24 different race events. The Regatta grew to a two-day event in 1997 and now attracts up to 300,000 spectators during the October weekend.

Following the HOC, the Pioneer Navy will return to the northeast next weekend (Oct. 30) for the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta in Philadelphia, PA.